Just to let you know that I have finally managed to get an ‘About Me’ page up and running.

Hopefully this gives you an insight into my life and what I am all about.

Thanks,

Harry.

During my time studying 3D I have come accross some rather uguly and complicated terms and have struggled to get my head around them. Now I hopefully have I thought I would start a little jargon buster for all the terms and phrase I come along. So here it is for now:

Vector – This is an object that properties consist of a direction, length, sense that is aligned with the direction. To understand sense, take the example of a water pipe. The pipe is going along in one direction but the water (or sense) could be going a completely different way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vector_by_Zureks.svg

Vector Space – This is a collection of objects that may be scaled and added. The objects are called vectors.

Vector3D – This is the same as a vector, but enables the property of depth to the object. Now, when you are handling an object of type Vector3D, you can change its:

1.       X axis

2.       Y axis

3.       Z axis

Whereas before, Z axis was not present in Vector.

Convex Hull – This is a set of points in a real vector space.

Convex Set – This is an object where every X and Y position can be joined up by a line without that line leaving the area of the object.

A good example of a Convex Set is a cube.

Tuple – This is a sequence, also known as an ordered list, of values. Names of different capacity tuples:

Coordinate Vector – In linear algebra, a coordinate vector is the representation of a vector through the form of an ordered list of numbers.

Linear Algebra – This is the branch of mathematics concerned with the study of vectors, vector spaces (also called linear spaces), linear maps (also called linear transformations), and systems of linear equations.  

Vertex – This refers to a special kind of point. There are many types but here are some related to Mathematics:

Angle:

The vertex of an angle is where to rays begin or meet, or where two line segments join or meet, where two lines cross.

Polytope:

A vertex is a corner point of a polygon, polyhedron or other higher dimensional polytope, formed by the intersection of edges, faces, facets.

Plane tiling:

A vertex of a plane tiling or tessellation is a point where three or more tiles meet.

Matrix – When referred to within Flash, it represents how to map points from one coordinate space to another. Flash 8 and CS3 standard Matrix included changing X and Y, rotation, scaling, and skewing.

http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/8/main/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=LiveDocs_Parts&file=00002389.html

Matrix3D – This is the same as a matrix but with the z axis added.

Complex Number – This is where real numbers are added/subtracted (etc…) but with an imaginary number (i), whose square root equals -1, is added onto one or many of them.

Quaternion – Quaternion is an extension of a complex number. Instead of just one complex number (i), you have three complex numbers – i, j, and k. http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1095.asp

Frustum – This is the part of a solid between two parallel planes cutting the solid.